Platform: PlayStation 4 (Via PlayStation 5)
Date Started: July 19th, 2022
Date Finished: December 8th, 2022
Time Played: 20 Hours

"And Thus, the Saga Begins..."

Shenmue, alongside its followups, is my favourite video game of all time. As a series, this is not only unlike anything I have played, but no other game comes close to the adoration I have for it. This first entry, the first chapter, is a wonder of storytelling and exploration thanks to it's magnificent mysteries and character work, captivating cinematic presentation and cosy small town intimacy. It lays the foundation for, and is in and of itself, something truly magical, and each time playing through it is pure joy.

The world and atmosphere is one of the absolute main highlights in Shenmue (although, to me, every aspect is a highlight). What's "exploration" for us, the player, is the familiar for Ryo as we trot around his tiny home town of Yokosuka, investigating the death of his father and talking to all the locals. Being able to chat to every single one of these NPC's, who each all have their own voice, name, background story and daily schedule, exemplifies how immersive this game is, and how perfectly it transports you to this locale.

Shops, restaurants, hair salons, tattoo parlours, bars, gambling rooms, food shops, fortune tellers and more make up this tiny world, and you can see each one of the workers here open up shop at the start of the day and go to their own home at the end of it, as well as their customers visiting with shopping bags in hand. People have lunch breaks, kids play outside and washing is put out on the sun and taken down in the rain. The level of detail is astonishing, even down to the weather being accurate to the time, place and date of the real world location, all something rarely found anywhere else since. It's the single most immersive piece of media I have ever experienced.

Equally magnificent is the story of the game, which, on paper is a fairly simple tale, but it's one that gets more and more fascinating the more you dive in. The mystery of the mirrors, Ryo's father, Lan Di and the Chi You Men are all magnificently enthralling, and the memorable cast of characters you meet and spend time with along the way make your stay in this world ever more mesmerising. The myriad optional scenes and side quests also make sure that there's tons to uncover and even more depth to each character interaction, although I can't say I've ever attempted to play the game without a guide in order to see everything I can!

Combat-wise I always find things tricky in this game because I'm not really good at remembering and learning combos and the like, but I really have a great time regardless, and another of the things I love here is physically training daily in order to level up these skills. All of these small things really add to the immersion once again, as you really bring yourself into the role of Ryo - training, meditating at the alter, checking in on your friends and sparring in the dojo daily, whilst never losing track of your main goal - I will avenge you father!

It's clear that I could gush about this game forever, but I have to stop somewhere before just lose it completely - I didn't even get around to detailing how wonderful a lead Ryo is and how excellent the other lead characters and their relationships are, how untouchable the soundtrack is or how amazing it feels to plod around in the night when the lights illuminate the cosy streets - especially at Christmas when the decorations are up! Suffice it to say, this first chapter in the Shenmue saga is a masterful first entry into my favourite thing the video game medium has to offer, and I can't wait to retread into the next entry.

Shenmue is a quirk. What a wild little time. In 1999, Shenmue was groundbreaking. Graphics were fairly top notch, the expansive dialogue and individual character patterns and behaviors were all remarkable for a console game of the last millennia. And honestly, a lot of it still holds up today.

Even by modern standards, it's impressive that you can open every door and closet in the Hazuki household and that each one has modeled items in them that you'd expect for that room. And for no purpose other than simple interactivity. The lightly guided hints in a big expansive breathing lively world is so Morrowind-y it's funny this precedes Morrowind by 2 years. And looks better to boot.

It's seriously hard to undersell how good Shenmue is from 1999. The gameplay has a bit of jank but nothing that would've been out of place in the late nineties. The story is engaging but very threadbare. Full of mystery and little details. An extremely JJ Abrams style mystery box with mcguffins and no substance, all puzzle and no meat. But it's still quite pleasant to trek down the mystery. Asking every NPC in Dobuita and filling out your journal. Waiting for time to pass. Collecting capsule toys. Shenmue is stunningly fun to just exist in for a game that by most quantifiable measures has shockingly little content.

The forklifts are cool. They're always a bugaboo to people who play this. And yeah sure, I loved it but even I think it's probably one day too long. The whole game is just so charming. The characters have so much life to them. Such strong personalities. All of them having names and little new things to say everyday and all of them being so invested in Ryo just makes me care so much about them. I feel like each NPC at each shop in Dobuita gave me so much immersion despite being 99% useless 90% of the time.

The fights in the game have weird and inconsistent difficulty spikes, the inability to skip time, the lack of detail on several game mechanics (like training), the weird story pacing. There's lots of complaints. But honestly, Shenmue is so much better than the sum of its parts. And if it was 1999 and I was reviewing this I'm sure I'd give it a full 5/5. Just a game teeming with life and charm.

Proof that just because something is revolutionary, doesn't mean it's good.

I'm 20 years late on this one, and maybe that's why I'm missing the appeal of the game because I don't have the nostalgia glasses on, but I really don't understand the hype that Shenmue gets.

Sure, the NPCs have routines, and sure you can talk with all of them in this immersive world. But when 99% of the NPCs regurgitate the same responses, refuse to talk to you, or just point you in the direction of the 1% you DO need to talk to, what is that adding to the game?

All of the ideas presented by Shenmue are good on paper, but executed poorly. Exploring the world to investigate a mystery? Good! Having the "investigation" be asking people the same questions ad infinitum until exposition happens? Not so good. A day night cycle with characters following a routine? Good! Locking players off from certain things until a certain time and not allowing them to advance time in hour-long loops? Not good. I mean for gods sake the whole game up until finding Charlie is a wild goose chase that leads nowhere until you get the Chinese letter!

I'll admit that Shenmue popularised a lot of really interesting mechanics, I won't say it introduced them when examples can be see elsewhere (see Mizzurna Falls doing a lot of what Shenmue did the year prior), but when they're presented like this it makes for a slog that doesn't want to show off the one feature the whole concept was based around; the fighting, which is actually really good!

I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Shenmue, and I will play the others, so I only hope that they learn to take these incredibly interesting ideas and really show what you can do with them, realism is all well and good but when you try to make a game too realistic, you end up losing what makes a video game fun.

truly one of the most impressive games of its time. in its first disk, shenmue really had me hooked with its down to earth character interactions and conversations, and while the english voice acting is a bit iffy, i think that really adds to the vibe. people dont talk perfectly all the time, sometimes conversations are a little stilted, that's just what real life is like, and i think shenmue gets that down perfectly, whether intentional or not. unfortunately, i think once the game started focusing more on the combat and action, thats when it started to lose me. nothing really compared to the atmosphere of shenmue in its first act, and as such the remainder of the game didn't really capture me as much. even so, i'm glad that i played shenmue, and i wouldn't give up my time exploring its world for anything else. even if 40% of that time was spent working a forklift.

This is the only video game I've seen where nothing happens.

Shenmue is a cozy open world game whose traditions can be seen continued in titles like Yakuza, but not really much else. Instead of going for large world, it tries to make its world wide and interesting, with tons of named NPCs and quite a few interactions.

That said, I don't think it succeeds at all.

Shenmue is often described as mundane, and at first I could see what it was going for: the amount of interactivity is staggering, and unlike nothing else I've seen even today. However, this interactivity really only applies to your own house, and the rest of the game is fairly barebones when it comes to interacting with the world.

I suppose Shenmue is mostly a detective game of sorts, with you asking for hints and gathering clues trying to find the man who killed your father. What it boils down to is that through maybe 70% of the game you will leave your house at sunrise and start asking every random NPC pointless questions like "can you translate this?" "can you point me to the man who can translate this?" "do you know where this area is?"

Throughout the game you get no closer to figuring anything out except for what the artifact stolen by your father's killer might do, and that there are two of them. This is effectively the whole story of Shenmue.

There are a few ways to pass the time, and you will sometimes need to pass the time, but they're fairly basic: old emulated games, gacha machines, and a few side-quests that don't seem to lead anywhere important.

The game often resembles Majora's Mask with its time gimmick and a singlular main location, but aside from coziness of your hometown, there's really nothing to it. Every NPC including the main character could be replaced with a plank of wood to a better effect. The english localization is, at best, funny, but those instances are rare, and you're usually left with robots speaking to each other.

Ryo, the main character, is one of the biggest problems of this game. I never connected with him. His silly revenge quest is idiotic, and he can't be a badass in a game that features maybe 10 fights in total. He's a bumbling fool who never has any emotion and who is solely responsible for the most infamous part of the game.

Closer to the end of the game's story Ryo gets conned because he doesn't know what a receipt is, losing a whole lot of money. This forces him to look for a part-time job, which makes already tedious game even more boring. Every day you will do the same routine. This happens maybe half-way through actual game time, and your forklift adventures take up HOURS of gameplay, while the story barely progresses anywhere.

Do you remember opening hours of Twilight Princess? Link living in Ordon, doing mundane jobs, training, but his girlfriend (?) gets captured so he has to save her. This is the entirety of Shenmue, and it doesn't take mere few hours.

Shenmue is interesting. It's baffling that someone was given so much money to do a whole saga of games where first chapter is effectively you asking people for directions and driving a forklift. It's commendable, and hell, it's sometimes charming. And the music? Oh, the music is damn fantastic. Overall, the presentation of the game is on a whole other level. Yet it's so damn tedious.

No NPCs have any stories other than the few that just leave the game by the end. A few of them have pretty weird voices, but that's the extent of their character. It's just you, and a crowd of people through which you walk asking for sailors or whatever other breadcrumb Ryo has to look for.

I believe some of Shenmue's developers later became RGG Studio, and honestly, even at its worst Yakuza takes all the right lessons from the mistakes of this game.

I respect Shenmue, it's weird. However, don't expect me to play it ever again.

I feel bad talking smack about this game in particular because it is clearly a vision that is loved by it's creator but sadly, the creator does not love me.

The game makes the player wait around for anything to happen without having a time skip. If an NPC tells you to come back tomorrow, you have to wait 20 or so minutes in real time.

The story features a young man by the name of Ryo that finds his father dead and will now go on a quest seeking revenge by killing the mysterious man who murdered his father.

That sounds well enough.
How does Ryo find the man who murdered his father?
By asking people who won't give him the time of day questions.
"Where are the sailors?" Ryo asks the shop owner.
The shop owner has no idea.
This is a great pausing moment to reflect upon your life choices to play this game. It does not respect your time.
The sailors are probably at the pier, running a train on your mother, Ryo.
Why doesn't he just go there instead of asking random people where sailors could be?
Because if you removed Ryo's permanent face patch, you'd find out that he is actually made out of wood.
Which makes a lot of sense if you listen to his terrible voice acting.

This game was impressive for showcasing Japan during the Dreamcast era but has nothing else going for it.
The story is still not concluded 3 games and an animated TV Show later.

This is Yakuza for people with problems.
Taping my balls on the ceiling fan and going for a spin is more fun than playing this game.

The implications of what games could be in the future, and what this game was for its own time, were among the first things to attract me to this Dreamcast gem. Living in this world with an in-game clock, NPCs with a schedule going about their lives, all whilst investigating the death of our father like an amateur sleuth trying to piece together the info was an exciting thought for me. I'm only sad that, after all of these years, I've never played the sequels and I know that the story isn't resolved in Shenmue 3. I want some closure!

being a yakuza fan, ive tried playing shenmue a few times and it's never really successfully managed to "grab" me. usually i'd quit because i just got bored and barely got a taste of the combat even after maybe a couple hours, and what was there, i didnt care for
thinking combat was the appeal of the game and that it's essentially a proto-yakuza was my mistake. it does share elements with yakuza, namely in its overworld approach of being this "explore-japan-and-do-stuff simulator" but make no mistake, shenmue has more in common with point n click adventure games (just without the pointing and clicking), where you talk to everyone, use what you know to figure out what you need to do, and just explore the world in general, while experiencing the story at a leisurely pace. yes theres a time limit, but its not one that really matters.
now then, there is combat, but it's pretty rare and not great. it aims to be something inbetween streets of rage and tekken and to mixed results. like most of this game, i'm sure it was revolutionary at the time, but it comes off as very clunky and sometimes special moves can be really finnicky and just wont activate when you do them. the moves are direction-based and changes with the camera direction, and you do not control the camera, so fights usually end up being pretty sloppy when they do happen. its scarcity makes a big brawl feel very out of place as it barely prepares you to fight more than a few people at a time.
the real core of the game is going around and talking to people and everyone and everything having its own schedule, right down to the weather. going around and just talking to people all day and night might not seem very engaging, but frankly i find it fascinating and only makes it feel like even more of a "japan simulator". it's not without it's problems though. namely how often it just makes you wait. yeah i get it, it wants you to explore so you can stop and smell the roses. i get that. but i already do that at my own pace. let me give you an example of when this becomes a problem. very minor spoilers for the following paragraph.
so theres a point in the game where ryo needs to travel by plane, after gathering funds, i head to the travel agency at around 4pm or so. they tell me to come back in 4 hours. but they close at 7 so i need to come back tomorrow. the next day, i get up and wait till 10 to get inside, only to find different people there. they say they'll call me tomorrow. so i have nothing to do for the rest of the day and dont really have much money to do almost anything. and you can't even go to sleep and skip a day, you need to wait until night time before you can sleep. since i went into this game blind, i expected to be on the plane by this point and had everything i intended to already done by this point, so there wasn't really much i could do but wait... so i put my controller down, went to the bathroom, let my dog out, got a drink, made something to eat, let my dog out again because he's annoying, came back and it wasn't even night time yet. after more waiting, i can finally sleep and when i wake up, i'm told to go to the arcade and have to wait until noon for it to open, where i promptly get a cutscene that makes everything i did with the travel agency worthless. immediately after this i talk to some people that tell me to go to the harbor and find a job and then at the harbor im told to come back tomorrow. it's just filler.
which brings me to the game's story. i'll be brief on this as i want to avoid spoilers so anyone reading this can go in about as blind as i did, but the game's ambition is as much it's appeal as it is a detriment. the story is the best example of this, as it does grip you, especially if you arent playing with the atrocious dub, and i do wish to see how it plays out as i go through the game, but it takes itself so slowly and meanders so much that there's very little story actually being told. and i blame this on how overly ambitious it is as a franchise, as the amount of games that were planned is ludicrous, and being the first part of some big epic only means that things only feel like they're being built up, and there's not much resolution to be found. so much of this game is exploring the same 2 locations and talking to the same people with the actual story barely inching along, any progress made rarely feels like a step forward in the plot, it often feels like a side step. and by the time it ends, it feels like everything thats happened was just the first quarter of a story stretched out as much as possible. you never feel like the story is truly out of that first act until the game's over. but at the same time, i can kind of forgive that, as for a game this ambitious and for all the detail and care put into it, and just how outright innovative it is, scaling back the scope of the story so that more can be done in the sequel does make some sense.



with all that said, shenmue is a truly unique experience unlike any other, even today, it has its fair share of problems, and dated elements, but don't let that stop you from experiencing something like this. shenmue is a dreamcast classic for a reason.

also QTEs suck

Shenmue is one of the most AAA video games I have ever played. Look at the release date, man. That's a pretty old game! Shenmue had people walking around meticulously detailed homes and picking up items to closely examine them long before modern Sony latched onto this idea and made people hate it. I always knew people loved Shenmue, but I can't help but feel the quality of it has been completely undersold to me. I was aware of the goofy English voice acting and forklift driving, but was not aware of its Yakuza (Like A Dragon)-like structure. Not to say it's exactly like a Yakuza game. There is far less combat and a bit more interactivity with the world itself. While Yakuza is a blend of JRPG and Beat em up design, Shenmue is sort of constructed around a point-and-click adventure game structure (and fighting game combat). Narratively it has a similar flow as well. A domino effect of events continue to fall throughout the experience. It starts with one goal that gets stretched out with steps added on in between A and B. It plays out like a detective mystery. Talk to this guy to learn about this other dude who wants to meet you somewhere at a certain time to tell you about a specific thing. It's a wonderful chain of events.

Shenmue does something I find unique with its 'quests'. It yearns for a realistic human experience. For example, you might be trying to find out where a character likes to hang out at night: This leads you to ask people around town for clues. Normally a game will push you along this process and tell you where to get this information from. I don't mind this streamlined narrative design in most games, but I do appreciate how Shenmue approaches the idea of gathering information. You have to discover it on your own and sometimes the people you ask will not be helpful at all. They may be completely wrong or you may discover a better idea than that which was given. An example that comes to mind is when Ryo needs to obtain a plane ticket. He gets advice on where to go. You go to a travel agency but it's far too expensive. Someone says to ask another character about cheaper flight ideas because they travel a lot. Before I even reached this character I decided to chat with a guy by the vending machine. He then tells me that traveling by boat is the way to go if I want to save money. This indeed is how the story will progress. I assume talking to the friend who's a travel expert would simply result in them telling me they don't have any ideas for me, but I loved this natural feeling of chatting with a stranger and obtaining new solutions without being strictly directed to do so. This feeling lives on for the entire game. People are people in the world of Shenmue. They aren't quest givers. You gain a sense that this town is alive and the people actually know each other. It's authentic.

There's an intended inconvenience to everything as well. You don't have a minimap, you have map posts around town. As far as I know you can't even get a map to carry around with you. This was slightly tedious to me at first, but I loved this when I started to get around based on the visuals alone. I knew Ryo's home and all the towns like my own house after a while. If I ran around with my eye fixated on a minimap all the time I would never memorize the geography. I developed a morning routine. While working on the story objective I would get a coffee from the vending machine, snag a couple toy capsules, purchase food and drink for the stray cat, and continue with my day. I made sure to talk to certain characters every day. When one of these characters tells me I'm one of their best friends by the end of the game I felt rewarded for my intrinsic desire to talk with everyone. I would probably get the same dialogue from that character near the end of the game, but because of my daily encounters with them it felt like a reward. He's my best friend too!
I didn't want to be home too late. I wanted to go play pool with the scumbags at the bar after work. I wanted to take care of the cat. I wanted to collect all the toys. I wanted to win the forklift race. I wanted to get a raise every day.
I repeat the 'want' to emphasize that I wanted to do this, I did not need to. Shenmue is not interested in forcing the potential of its experience on you. Something so many modern AAA games fail to achieve. They have an amazing experience but only if you do it their way. Shenmue's world detail and player freedom is staggering. Not just for 1999, but in general.

I've seen some criticism over the part of the game that becomes a forklift simulator as well. I can understand this not being fun for some, but Shenmue never lost my interest. I had fun working as a forklift driver. There was a simple enjoyment in doing the work well and making more money every day. However, I believe the repetitive nature is on purpose and totally intended. Ryo is about to graduate high school. He's 18. The guy is about to become an adult right as his father is killed. The first half of the game is still driven by this plot, but you have so much free time to run around the towns and have more "fun". Suddenly you're working full time. You gotta wake up earlier. You only get free time during lunch and maybe a couple hours after work. You see co workers more than your own friends and family. The feeling of not having free time anymore is crushingly real. I missed being able to check on the cat with the town locals. Most of the shops I would visit were closed after work. Life was devoured by work and the main plot. I would possibly feel nostalgia for the first half of the game if I were to replay it. This is cool thematic narrative design. Ryo is forced to grow up as fast as possible. The game provides a bite sized serving of what it feels like to...grow up and get a job. Never does Ryo lament his youth and complain about work before bed every night to hammer this idea in. You experience it and feel it for yourself.

Shenmue is a fantastic looking game as well. The changing skies. The shifting of weather. The barking dogs of the neighborhood. The bustling noise of a busy street. I love using the trigger to control running speed like a gas pedal on a car. I love how perfectly Ryo walks up stairs (people obsessed with accurate stair climbing animations will adore Shenmue). I love collecting music tapes that all have unique album art. I love collecting toy capsules. I love that there are two different versions of darts to play and an arcade with older sega games. I love that I can take pictures off the wall of my home for no reason. The amount to do is almost unnecessary. The voice acting is goofy and compressed to hell, but if you can't have fun with that, the Japanese voice acting can soften the silliness. I think the goofy old "obviously voice acting" voice acting is fun to experience, but it is not what defines this game. It's not always that bad. I was still capable of taking the story seriously.

Of course the story isn't over and Shenmue II is waiting for me. There's a lot of mystery and unanswered questions. I love that! It's an absurdly confident video game. This left a huge impact on me. Shenmue is an all timer. This was my first time playing it and I was consistently impressed by it. It's not impressive for it's time, it's impressive for right now.